Influence of TV to lawyers profession

What does the name David E. Kelly represent to you? Are you familiar with it? If you don’t know who is this man, you probably don’t know how he changed lives of future lawyers. He is a creator of TV shows such as: L.A.Law, The Practice, Boston Legal… If you didn’t see any of these series, they are about lives of attorneys. Their portrayal is sometimes unreal and comical but there is one fact that cannot be denied. Popularity of jobs in law increased a lot because of these shows.

Statistics don’t lie. Because, let’s face it, when you imagine lawyers, judges and all people that are connected with the court of law, you think about cold and serious people doing their jobs like they are some kind of robots. Characters from these series gave a certain human aspect to a profession called lawyers.

Unlike Ally McBeal and Boston Legal, The Practice was a serious and awarded drama. It showed less glamorous lives of people working in a small law firm, who try to fight for a little man, and also try to fight against bigger firms, because they don’t have problems with hiring clients. The Practice was critically acclaimed series and it was described as profoundly realistic. Because of the low ratings, they added a funny character (Alan Shore) in their last season, and he later was centered in a spin off show Boston Legal.

Boston Legal, on the other hand, was a comedy and it had an assignment, like any other comedy, to make people laugh. I t was a funny show but it also gave some humanization to characters, if we observe attorneys like, previous mentioned, robots.

But Ally McBeal made the strongest humanization to lawyers, especially, female lawyers. Young woman follow her high school boyfriend to law school, but she eventually became even better attorney than she imagine that she would be.

Ally McBeal

All this shows created hype about profession called lawyer. Popularity of attorneys were increased and people started to think about them like they are not machines. David E. Kelley certainly made a huge favor for this profession.